Language

LANGUAGE

The origin of language is subject to considerable speculation. Some words may be imitative of natural sounds. Others may have come from expressions of emotion, such as laughter or crying. Language, some theorists believe, is an outgrowth of group activities, such as working together or dancing. Another theory holds that language developed from basic sounds Alphabet development that accompanied gestures. Some 3000 languages and major dialects are spoken in the world today, most of them grouped in families. As some languages grow, others decline and disappear. The changes in language reflect class, gender, profession, age group, and other social forces.

SPEECH

People probably learned to talk hundreds of thousands of years ago. We have no way of finding out how speech began .In prehistoric societies , people did not know how to write ,so they could not keep records .Somehow they learned to make others understand what their vocal sounds meant , and they learned to put the sounds together into language .But we can never really know how human beings invented speech .We can only wonder and guess.

Ancient tribes preserved their history in the form of spoken words and songs. People told the stories over and over , so listeners would remember them and tell them to their children. The stories changed in the telling because nobody remembers things exactly all the time. Stories kept only the meanings that were most important to the people - including meanings about how life and death and earth and humanity were thought to have begun. After many years and many retellings, these stories became myths and legends. For thousands of years only storytellers and singers preserved these legends. During the Middle Ages minstrels did the job that books and newspapers do today. They wandered from one area to another, giving listeners stories and news in the form of songs called ballads.

WRITING

In the Stone Age, people knew how to make a picture represent an object. Cave dwellers carved picture of animals on the walls of their caves. So thousands of years later, these people still communicate with us. Their pictures tell us what animals they hunted. This was not writing as we know it, but Egyptian Writing writing did grow out of picture making. Gradually the pictures became more and more complicated. They began to stand for ideas as well as for animals or objects. American Indians had various forms of picture writing long before the time of Columbus. The Maya in Central America had a highly developed written language of hieroglyphics - picture symbols that stand for things or ideas. Other American Indians told their stories with picture of men, women, animals and spirits. People took a giant step towards inventing real writing when they learned to make a picture stand for a sound instead of an object .

The Sumerians in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) began to do this more than 5,000 years ago. The ancient Egyptians and Maya also wrote in pictures that meant words. The Chinese still use a very complicated form of picture writing today. In their language each written sign (called an ideograph) stands for a single one syllable spoken word. So they need many thousands ideographs in order to write. The next step was to invent a written language in which each sign stood for a single sound instead of for a whole word. We call this system an alphabet. The word "alphabet " comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. Mediterranean peoples - the Hebrew and Phoenicians - were the first to use the alphabet. Since the Phoenicians were great sea traders, they needed a simple , efficient way of writing to keep their business records. So about 3,000 years ago they developed a system of 22 pictures that stood for the sounds of the consonants in their language. This was much better than using a different picture to mean each word , because they could make any word they wanted form the 22 letter signs . The Greeks , the Etruscans and the Romans all based their writing on the Hebrew and Phoenicians alphabet. The Greeks added signs that mean vowels sounds. Over 2,000 years ago the Romans developed the Roman alphabet , which we still use in the Western world.

In the Middle Ages few people knew how to read and write. Monks, living in secluded monasteries , were almost the only writers. Each monastery had a special room called a scriptorium. Here the monks wrote on parchments with quills (goose or turkey feathers ). They printed each letter by hand and illustrated the pages with coloured drawings .These were manuscript books. (The word "manuscript " comes from two Latin words meaning "written by hand. ")Each book was a work of art . No one except a very rich bishop or feudal baron could afford such a book.

One of the reasons manuscript books were so rare was that it took so much time and skill to make them. Another reason was that there was no inexpensive , lightweight material on which people could write. By 2nd Century A.D the Chinese knew how to make paper from bamboo , silk or linen. But there was very little communication between the Far East and Europe. Not until Marco Polo visited China in the 12th century did European people learn about the invention of paper. The Egyptians and Chinese were the first to use ink. Sometimes they made it of charcoal or of lampblack mixed with glue. The Chinese painted their picture words with brushes and ink. The Greeks and Romans made ink from the ink sac of the cuttlefish.

Reference

Thinkquest Participation 99Edition(http://www.thinkquest.org)
Entry from Royal College Port Louis Students
Mauritius